Media groups have slammed a move by the Securities Commission of Zimbabwe (SEC) to register financial journalists as securities investor advisers, which some analysts say will be an effective media gag.

In terms of the Securities Act, financial journalists will now be required to pay a license fee of $2 000 by December 31 2010, to report in their field. Media practitioners argue that this would result in over-regulation of media practitioners because financial journalists are already accredited by the statutory Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC).

MISA-Zimbabwe chairperson Loughty Dube said the SEC should have consulted the media community first before making the recommendation to government. He said the decision was a "simple way of gagging the media" explaining that journalists cannot afford such a high licensing fee.

"Journalism is a dissemination profession, not an idea-generating profession. The job of a reporter is to report. Can we, for example, say an entertainment reporter should become a member of the Zimbabwe Music Association in order to write news about the arts?" Dube said.

Change to the media space has been slow in taking place despite promises by the unity government to free the media. Dube said that repressive acts used against journalists are still in place, meaning the industry is still stifled. The government this year finally awarded newspaper licences to independent papers, but Dube dismissed this as "not good enough."

"We need to see the freeing up of the airwaves," Dube said. "Only then can we say there is real change on the way."